Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Here we are as in olden days,
Happy golden days of yore.
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Gather near to us once more.

from ‘Have Yourself A
Merry Little Christmas’ by Blane & Martin

I borrowed props for this feature and spent four months
shooting (the pink and blue themes were shot in this period as well). Doing Christmas up like this is rewarding,
but shall we say a little tough to achieve in real life?! All you really need is:

Family and friends

Cute pets

Chocolate

Evergreens

Candles

Coarse German glass glitter

Vintage glass ornaments

Faux fur accents

Holiday music

More chocolate

A wish for peace on Earth and goodwill to everyone.

The time involved doing well in graduate school and the time
involved blogging with all my heart are incompatible if either are to be
done excellently. Sadly, I must go
on a sabbatical from blogging.

I wish I could gather each of you, my gentle readers, in a
big group hug. Then have hot cocoa by a
bonfire in the snow with music under the stars.

I will drop in on you for that virtual cup of cocoa we share
in our community.

I wish you a very happy holiday season and a new year where
all your dreams come true.

Monday, December 24, 2012

Quot estis in convivio - all who are feasting
together
Servite cum in cantico - serve it while singing

from The Boar’s Head
Carol (traditional)

Sometimes you feel like busting out the Cambridge stemware and tablecloth for holiday
dinner celebrations. Christmas falls
after a weekend this year so there may a ghost of a chance to spend a day
making your table special.

Ideas for pull-out-the-stops elegance:

Glass
sparkles in candlelight so load it on the table

Use
taper candles – the height of their light flatters the table

Spray
evergreens with aerosol adhesive and dust with 70 grit German glass
glitter

Place
vintage ornaments along the evergreens

Cinch
huge napkins with a small length of silver chenille (pipe cleaner)

Use
chargers or larger plates under the dinner plates

Print
French handwriting graphics on two pieces of paper, tape together, cut the
edges with pinking shears, and write a loving message to your guest

Avoid hurrying around by setting up as far in advance as
possible. The candles clipped onto the plates is a photo shoot anachronism. In real life they'd make too much of a mess at dinner (where does one put it after it's blown out?). It’s more important you relax
and enjoy your guests than having everything perfect!

Sunday, December 23, 2012

Let's deck the halls with holly
Sing sweet silent night
Fill the tree with angel hair
And pretty, pretty lights
Go to sleep and wake up
Just before daylight

All these things and more, baby
That's what Christmas means to me my love

Stevie Wonder

What do you do for a yummy breakfast when you’re gluten and
lactose intolerant, or a guest has these dietary restrictions? Make French toast!

Ingredients:

Gluten free bread (found in the organic section or in the
freezer by the pizza in markets)

Almond milk

Eggs

Cinnamon

In a shallow pan, crack one egg per person. Add an equal volume of almond milk. Lay slices of bread in it on both sides and
cook in a skillet. Sprinkle with
cinnamon, dust with confectioner’s sugar (for a pretty garnish) and serve with
warmed maple syrup!

Saturday, December 22, 2012

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas
With every Christmas card I write
May your days be merry and bright
And may all your Christmases be white

Irving Berlin

If you like all-white holiday décor in your home, why not
try it outside your home?

Use white ribbon on your evergreen garlands and
wreaths. The inexpensive
polyester/plastic kind is ideal because it holds up in fierce weather.

The skinny single wire wreath is made from small branches of boxwood wired around it. It look a fraction of the time it takes to do full wreath.

While collecting evergreens from the woods for your flower
boxes, look for branches on the ground with lots of lichen on them. They fall from the tops of older trees and
lie there, waiting for their beauty to be shared. The green-gray rosette shapes and craggy
branches are a lovely contrast to the soft forms of evergreens. So very restful by compare to excessive
displays in my opinion!

The holly and the ivy
Now both are full well grown,
Of all the trees that are in the wood,
The holly bears the crown.
O the rising of the sun
And the running of the deer
The playing of the merry organ
Sweet singing of the choir

Traditional/Cecil
Sharp

I am embarrassed how late this thank-you is posted. I got a 98 for the semester in
graduate school, and part of that was achieved by ceasing “distractions” like
Facebook and blogging. It's like coming out from under a rock. I found out
Kathleen at Faded Charm anointed Timewashed with White Wednesday two months
after the fact.

My humble thanks to Lonnie and Vivian at Jeanne d’Arc Livingfor even opening the
email I sent to consider my story. My
heart skips a beat as I recall the moment I received a reply from my very
favorite magazine reciting they were interested.

The weekend I dug into my first copy of Jeanne d’Arc Living(December 2010) I remained gobsmacked. I stared, and stared and stared, at every
picture and read every word.

It is very rare I am transfixed, but this self-published
magazine did it. Its core value: simplicity. The fact it’s
Scandinavian has much to do with its sweet minimalist elegance. Their Christmas culture is beautiful and exotic, involving things I was vaguely aware of like cardamom, marzipan, and Advent.

Carina’s (Made In Persbo) story showed her pulling cardamom
cake out of a wood fired Husqvarna stove.
Dorte Palsgaard’s marzipan candies were shaped with common kitchen
utensils. A suggestion of giving gifts of
time instead of money. The idea the
holidays could be affordable yet beautiful sold me
immediately. The promise of rest over running around was a plus.

At that time my agent was peddling my book idea around New York, but I guiltily became more interested in doing a Jeanne d'Arc Livingshoot. Notes were
scribbled, props were made, evergreens cut.
Between December 2010 to early April 2011 on every weekend with snow I
shot. A yummy blizzard blew in and I
took a vacation day just to shoot. I
kept holiday music on my iPod hoping its spirit would infuse the April
photos, exposed so the windows wouldn't show the lame patchy snow outside.
I took my camera with me on errands in case “serendipity” happened. We are rewarded with the shot of the deer in
the woods because I “expected the unexpected”.

That kind of unexpected is good. I expected “good” when this story was
printed. I'd be reading it by the woodstove surrounded by my dogs and family.
That house burned down. I haven’t had the money or time to visit
family or dogs and I will celebrate the holidays after I get paid on the 31st. Two years later most of my styling looks stuffy and overdone.
Ironic when I was going for simple. That's life. Gotta deal.

Sometimes, bad stuff happens and good comes of it. In November I had an issue with my landlord and wanted
out of the room I rented. If it never
happened, I wouldn’t have looked for the cottage I rent now. I can see a sliver of the Long Island Sound from my
bedroom window through the winter woods. In it I will spend four blissful days with nothing to do but catch up with old friends, reading, sleeping,
and blogs (yes yours old friend).

BLISS!

Visit the sellers and/or creators of vintage & handmade
props in this story:

Mira and Bianca thrilled me soon after Belle Blanc For The Love of White was released with the news there would be a holiday inspiration book to follow. At last it is here. Join me as I share a few pictures of the copy Mira & Bianca signed for me.

Belle Blanc Merry Christmas is full of holiday ideas with a German accent, such as the sweet Zimtwaffeln butter rum cookies made in a mold of fancy shapes. There are pre-printed labels to tear out and use on homemade gifts, and templates for sewing Mira's vintage-style teddy bears. Never-seen-before floral arrangements and tabletops make the tableaux traditional and exciting. Also, never-before-seen reds come in the vignettes with great success. A feeling of coziness wraps around the reader as we see teddy bears and children in the pages, too.

Share more at their blog. You're in for a treat if you've never visited Belle Blanc.

Angels we have heard on high
Sweetly singing o’er the plains,
And the mountains in reply
Echoing their joyous strains.

Traditional French Carol translated by James Chadwick, 1862

I am not disappointed in the least for this heavenly holiday book. Written in both Swedish and English, it is full of the most casually elegant French-Nordic ideas for decorating and entertaining. It's going to come out of my bookcase and be read every November for inspiration. And to think Nina and Maria-Isabel didn't even want to do a Christmas book at first!

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas;
Soon the bells will start,
And the thing that will make them ring is the carol that you sing
Right within your heart.

Meredith Willson

Very special thanks are due to Jacqueline de Montravel and the staff of Romantic Homesmagazine for featuring my "Nutcracker Ballet Holiday" story in the December 2012 issue!

Interested in some of the ornaments? My friend Roberta Comeau is selling them in her Delhi, NY shop Whispers from the Past. She's taken a few and crafted lovely wreaths out of them already. We're decorating a tree for the annual holiday auction to benefit The Heart of the Catskills animal shelter with the rest of the ornaments.

If you like the ornaments on the tree, gentle reader, you may be able to buy some from Whispers of the Past in Delhi, NY. Roberta Comeau may offer a few of my ornaments and glitter houses in her shop. She donated a tree made of some of my holiday collection to the Heart of the Catskills' annual raffle to benefit homeless pets.

My humble thanks for Franciska and Roberta for including me in their creative worlds.